translations, not the original works; to give our readers an account of these ancient Eastern poets as they appear before us in modern European attire, not to introduce them in their native garb and original simplicity and dignity: yet we may perhaps go further, and, frankly admitting that we have imperfect information, for that very reason advance a higher claim to impartiality. Those who have made themselves masters of a rare and difficult branch of study are naturally disposed to over-estimate its value. The very zeal which has carried them in triumph through many and great obstacles, insensibly magnifies the object, to attain which they have consumed so much labour. None but fervent and enthusiastic minds will apply themselves to such abstruse studies; and the fervour and enthusiasm which cheer them on their course will throw a bright and dazzling colouring over the objects of their pursuit. As to the first navigators of the ocean every island was a paradise, every rock a realm of gold and an abode of bliss; partly from the mere excitement of novelty; partly from the intoxication of success so long despaired of, and the sense of toil and peril undergone, which no one is willing to suppose that he has thrown away on a worthless object; partly from that universal propensity of our nature to attribute the highest value to that of which we have exclusive possession :-from illusions such as these men of the coolest minds cannot sometimes altogether emancipate themselves; and hence the reports of the first adventurers gradually sober down, and the enchanted lands, though they may still prove in a high degree picturesque and beautiful, lose their romantic and almost preternatural character. So, if we may still pursue the illustration, we have sailed to the pleasant shores of Indian poetry, with little toil on our own part; we have compared the separate accounts of the various discoverers with considerable care, and endeavoured to form a dispassionate judgment on the merits of the new territory thus added to the world of literature. In other words, we have collected from many quarters all the translations of Sanscrit poetry which we have been able to obtain -those of the Schlegels, of Bopp, of Kosegarten, and of Rosen, of the German school; of M. Chezy, in French; and in English, of Sir William Jones, the missionaries Carey and Marshman, but, above all, of Mr. Horace Hayman Wilson. Ourselves, as students of the language, being confessedly in our leading-strings, we have, nevertheless, been able to form our own opinion in many places where we have ventured to translate the foreign translations, as to the structure of the verse, the collocation of the words, and other peculiar characteristics of the originals. If we have, in general, been obliged to copy the wrong side of the tapestry,' we have, nevertheless, endeavoured to form some notion of the bril liancy and disposition of the colours on the right. Our object is to afford to the common reader, by the wide circulation of a popular journal, some knowledge of the valuable labours of men, whose industry and talents deserve a more extensive fame than they are likely to obtain within the circumscribed sphere in which Oriental scholars appear to dwell apart from the common world of letters; and, at the same time, to open a view, although necessarily rapid and imperfect, of the works of poets unknown, even by name, in the West, though once the delight of the most splendid courts, and some of them not merely the bards, but likewise the religious instructors of the most populous, perhaps in their day the most civilized, regions of the earth. Our first extract will be taken from the famous Bhagavat-Gita, an episode in the great epic poem, the Maha Bharatâ. The oldest poetry of the Hindus is contained in their primitive religious books, the Vedas,* and in their metrical laws, the Institutes of Menu. The Puranas, the traditions, as the Vedas are the scriptures of Hindu faith, are of later origin-the poetical Golden Legend of Brahminical hagiography. Between the Vedas and Puranas, in point of antiquity, or, at least, older than parts of the latter, rank the two great epic poems, the Ramayana and the Maha Bharatâ -the Iliad and the Odyssey of the heroic, or rather the mythological, age of Sanscrit poetry. These extraordinary works, in comparison to the stately and uniform structures of the Grecian bard, are as the Himalaya to the bifidi juga Parnassi, or perhaps, a more appropriate illustration, as the banian of India, stretching out, and striking down and taking root again, in an endless and intricate grove, to the spreading yet regular planes, or the tall and graceful poplars, which rise beside the margin of some poetic Grecian river. The Maha Bharatâ is most justly called the Great Bharata, for it is distributed into eighteen parts, which together amount to one hundred thousand slokas or distichs. In the midst of this giant epic occurs the Bhagavat-Gita, or the Divine Song-an episode, which, in the form of a dialogue between the god Krishna and the hero Arjuna, gives a full and most curious exposition of the half-mythological, half-philosophical Pantheism of the Bramins. It is, indeed, probable that this episode is of a much later * Of the Vedas, our knowledge is derived from the profound dissertation of Mr. Colebrooke, in the eighth volume of the Asiatic Researches. Professor Rosen, of the London University, has just put forth a 'specimen of the Rig Veda in the original, with a translation and notes. It consists of several short hymns, chiefly addressed to Agni, the God of Fire, and may be compared, with some interest, with the PseudoOrphic Hymns of Greek poetry, consisting, like them, of appellations and descriptions of the attributes of the different deities. The laws of Menu, it is well known, were translated by Sir W. Jones, and have been published in a splendid form, and, in the judgment of M. Chezy, with great critical ability, by Mr. Haughton, date 7 date than the poem itself; it reads like a noble fragment of Empedocles or Lucretius, introduced into the midst of an Homeric epic; and we observe that this episode is not noticed in the abstract of the Javanese version of this part of the Maha Bharata in Sir Stamford Raffles's work. Yet, in point of poetical conception, there is something singularly striking and magnificent in the introduction of this solemn discussion on the nature of the The battle pauses godhead and the destiny of man, in the midst of the fury and tumult of the civil war in which it occurs. while the god and the hero hold their sublime, though somewhat prolix, converse; and if a later interpolation, it is allied with great address to the main subject of the poem. Of the Bhagavat-Gita we have before us-first, the English prose version of that venerable Sanscrit scholar, Mr. Charles Wilkins; secondly, the original text, with a Latin version, composed with singular elegance and dexterity by Augustus Schlegel; thirdly, some passages in German verse, at the end of the volume of Frederick Schlegel; fourthly, some extracts, in a remarkably able and profound disquisition on the philosophy as well as the poetry of the Bhagavat, by Baron William von Humboldt. A civil war had broken out between the two great heroic races of the sons of Pandu and the sons of Kuru. The Panduidæ, having been driven from the throne of their common parent, which had been usurped by the younger race of Kuru, are returning from exile, with a mighty army, to maintain their rights and claim their ancestral sceptre. The battle is in the act of closing; the tall and valiant Bhishma, the leader, on the part of the Kuruidæ, harangues his followers; he thunders like a roaring lion,' and blows his shell of battle, to which the conchs and all the warlike music of his host reply. On the other side appears Arjuna in his splendid car, drawn by white horses, and attended by the god Krishna. Arjuna and all his captains in their turn blow their conchs (each of which, like the swords and steeds of the knights of Arthur and Charlemagne, has its proper name,)—a moment, and the battle begins to rage. But Arjuna, still accompanied by Krishna, commands his chariot to be driven into the space between the armies. He surveys the opposing hosts,each composed of his kindred; he beholds, on either side, brothers in arms against brothers; populumque potentem, In sua victrici conversum viscera dextrâ, Cognatasque acies.' A deep melancholy passes over his spirit, and in these words he addresses the deity who stands by his side. (In the versification of these passages, which we have ventured to attempt, our eight line line measure, which we have adopted without rhyme, in the number of its syllables, and as nearly as possible, in its cadence, answers to the Sanscrit original.)* ← My kindred, Krishna, I behold, all standing for the battle arm'd; My every quailing member fails, and wan and wither'd is my face; Cold shuddering runs through all my frame, my hair stands stiff upon my head; And Gandivt falls from out my hand, and all my burning skin is parch'd. for bliss, Stand in the battle-field arrayed, and freely peril wealth and life? Teachers, sons, fathers, grandsires, uncles, nephews, cousins, kindred friends, Not for the triple world would I, oh Madhuis' conqueror, slaughter them; How much less for this narrow earth, though they would sternly slaughter me.' Arjuna dwells still more on the miseries of civil war, the extinction of noble races, the suspension of splendid family alliances, the interruption of all sacred rites, (the sacrificia gentilitia,) the general impiety, the licence among the females. He then sinks. back in his chariot, lays aside his bow and arrows, and awaits the answer of the god. Krishna sternly reproves his tameness of character. Arjuna replies in a tone still more sad and broken spirited, and declares that he had rather beg his bread than obtain empire by the slaughter of his kindred. The reply of Krishna breathes the terrible sublime of pantheistic fatalism. Upon this system, the murder, the massacre of the dearest kindred, are indifferent; death and life are but unimportant modifications of the *The oldest, most simple, and most generally adopted measure, is the Sloka, a distich, of two sixteen-syllable lines, divided at the eighth syllable. According to our prosodial marks, the following is the scheme : The first four syllables are bound by no rule; the second half, on the contrary, is unalterably fixed, excepting that the last syllable has the common licence of termination. In the second half verse, I do not remember a single instance of deviation from this, though sometimes, but very seldom, the first half verse ends with another quadrisyllable foot.'-Schlegel, Indische Bibliothek, p.36. Compare Mr. Colebrooke's elaborate Essays on Sanscrit Prosody, Kosegarten's Preface to Nala, and Bopp's Preface to his Translation of Selections from the Mahabharata. + His bow. same same being; and the immortality, the eternity of the soul becomes a terrific argument for utter disregard of human suffering in the present state of being. 'Thou mourn'st for those thou shouldst not mourn, albeit thy words are like the wise, For those that live or those that die, may never mourn the truly wise. Ne'er was the time when I was not, nor thou, nor yonder kings of earth: Hereafter, ne'er shall be the time, when one of us shall cease to be. The soul, within its mortal frame, glides on through childhood, youth, and age; Then in another form renew'd, renews its stated course again. And who is he that shall destroy the work of the Undestructible? What heeds he whether he may slay, or fall himself in battle slain? Perpetual, ever-wandering, firm, indissoluble, permanent, Invisible, unspeakable. Thus deeming, wherefore mourn for it? But didst thou think that it was born, and didst thou think that it could die? Even then thou should'st not mourn for it with idle grief, oh Bharata. Whate'er is born must surely die-whate'er can die is born again; Wherefore the inevitable doom thou should'st not mourn, oh Bharata.' In this tone proceeds at some length the implacable deity. Arjuna listens with deep submission and deference, and by degrees elicits from Krishna the whole philosophy of religion, concerning the nature of the gods, the universe, the nature of man, the supreme good, and the highest Wisdom. The first question is that which was constantly agitated in the Grecian schools-the comparative excellence of the active or contemplative life. Here the Bhagavat-Gita departs from the usual doctrine of the Yoguees, and eremitical fanatics of the East, and soars to a loftier mysticism. The highest perfection to which the human soul can attain is action without passion; the mind is to be entirely independent of external objects; to preserve its undisturbed serenity it should have the conscious power of withdrawing all |